Rebecca and Ramin, a couple of dear friends of mine who are very nice, good-hearted people who save stray animals and help little old ladies cross the street, have a smidge of a problem.

Chicago lost their car.

The story goes like this:

Thursday evening they parked their car at a meter on Kedzie at 2am. There were no signs up signaling anything out of the ordinary and it wasn’t a street cleaning day. The next day, Ramin went out to move the car at 10 and there was one of those “dropped out of the clear blue sky” construction sites. Bam. Smack dab where they had left their primary mode of transportation, surrounded by signs that say “No parking city ordinance M-F 7AM to 5PM”. Now, we all have seen this happen. It’s a fact of life here in our fair city and we get pissed, cope, swallow our rage, and pay the piper because, after all, that’s the penance we pay for owning cars in the city we love. Accepting this, the poor guy assumes the city has towed their car and spends all day long trying to locate it through the towing hotline. That car was nowhere to be found. As Rebecca puts it, “Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.” A cop friend of theirs told them they would have to check a “relocation list”. The car wasn’t on that either.

There is no record of a ticket because they couldn’t have legally ticketed the car under the circumstances. No ticket means no record of the car or where they moved it.

The good news is that the city has told them that they won’t have to pay any towing or storage fees for the car.

If they can find it.